If I were woke I would see light colored ants dominating dark colored ants. And it would be my fault for trying to maintain my ever shrinking ant sized carbon footprint.
“They are the fifth costliest invasive species in the world…”.
I know who are the first.
Fire ants are bad. However they are probably not as bad as many of the other invasive pests from China there seems to be no end to. I’d bet the Maromated Stink-bug does way more financial damage, the Emerald Ash Borer has pretty much made the Ash tree go extinct already and the new guy on the block the Lantern Fly is supposed to be very bad and is spreading like mad.
I remember some state tried to eradicate the fire ant and after millions of dollars and tons of poison spayed in the environment they did a survey and their numbers actually INCREASED LOL. Turn out the enemies of the fire ant like spiders were getting killed by the poisons faster than the ants.
We in Texas reply: Welcome to the party, pal!
Invasive species
Although most fire ant species do not bother people and are not invasive, Solenopsis invicta, known in the United States as the red imported fire ant (or RIFA), is an invasive pest in many areas of the world, including the United States, Australia, China and Taiwan.[23] The RIFA was believed to have been accidentally introduced to these countries via shipping crates, particularly with Australia when they were first found in Brisbane in 2001.[24] These ants have now since been spotted in Sydney for the first time.[25] They were believed to be in the Philippines, but they are most likely to be misidentified for Solenopsis geminata ants.[26]
The red imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta), also known as the fire ant or RIFA, is a species of ant native to South America. A member of the genus Solenopsis in the subfamily Myrmicinae, it was described by Swiss entomologist Felix Santschi as a variant of S. saevissima in 1916. Its current specific name invicta was given to the ant in 1972 as a separate species. However, the variant and species were the same ant, and the name was preserved due to its wide use. Though South American in origin, the red imported fire ant has been accidentally introduced in Australia, New Zealand, several Asian and Caribbean countries, Europe and the United States.
Climate change in 1916?
Like most all invasive species, they were imported by ship, whether accidental or otherwise.
Got a friend who smokes?
Poke a butt or two in the mound
Fireants hate nicotine.
Discovered this while residing
in the Houston area.
I have since quit smoking.
So this has nothing to do with the increased amount of shipping both by sea and air?
If airlines didn’t exist Covid wouldn’t have made it out of China... The reason why species are migrating more easily isn’t because of global warming... It’s because of global transportation.
Remember “Killer bees”? Long before “Murder hornets”, they were trying to scare everyone about killer bees migrating up from South America. That was in the ‘70’s. Haven’t heard much about them (or “murder hornets”) in quite a long time.
Unfortunately euronews, winter is coming.